Nonexistent Memories
by Alexandrite Moonlight
Summary: [ONE SHOT[Implied Slash] Life is not a Faerie story... not all things end happily... '“Grandmama... Who are those people in the picture?” The faces smiled up at her, faces she remembered so well, faces she had watch age...' Pain takes many forms...


Vibrant brown eyes, young and curious took in the picture on the coffee table beside the chair before turning questioningly to a pair of faded blue ones. 

"Grandmama?"

The age worn eyes smiled down at the child in her lap, her hand stroking the child's head.

"Who are those people in the picture?"

The woman turned to the picture, reaching out a hand that time had left less than steady, and brought it to her. She brought it forward then back, here faded eyesight making the faces blur slightly and she tilted it to let the faces catch the light of the antique lamp next to her. A soft smile, full of memories, curled the woman's face as she traced her thumb over the figures behind the glass.

The child's eyes turned to the picture, trying to see what her grandmama saw in the glass and colors. Slightly upset, she turned her face back up to her, her small lips forming a pout.

"Who are they?"

The demand made the old woman chuckle. The impatience of youth was such an innocent joy.

"They, my dear," she said, a frail arm giving the girl a quick hug, "they were my classmates and dearest friends." The faces smiled up at her, faces she remembered so well, faces she had watch age, and faces that she had watched fade in death. They were beautiful to her.

"But _who _are they?" The child insisted.

The grandmother removed her hand from around the child and pointed to the person on the furthest left of the picture, it was a boy with fiery red hair, freckles, and a smile that beamed unconcern as his arms circled around the waist of the girl in front of him, "That is your grandpapa, silly girl." She watched in pleasure as the child's small hand caressed the glass above the image.

"Grandpapa Ronnie…"

The old woman simply smiled, her eyes tearing up slightly at the thoughts of her late husband. "Now, can you guess who that is he is holding?" Her finger fell to the girl in the red headed boys arms, a girl with brown hair that fell in bushy waves around a face that was both prim and joyful, her hands wrapped around his arms as she leaned into him.

The girl thought for a moment, her tongue peeking out from her lips as she concentrated. Brown eyes sparkled as the answer came to her. "You!"

"Mmm-hmm", the old woman nodded.

"You were so little…", the girl mused.

"Everyone is at one time or another."

The girl simply stared at the picture confused before another question come to her mind.

"How come your hair is silver and the girl in the picture has brown hair?"

The old woman stroked the child's hair, hair that was has brown as her had been back then.

"As we age," she began, the knowledge of the exact metamorphosis coming to her mind, but she paused remembering who was asking and grinned, deciding on an explanation her husband would have given. "As we age, the colors in our hair begin to fade because Mother Nature and her faeries collect the different shades in order to keep the world colorful. The color of my hair may have been used to deepen the shade of the oak tree out front, or the soil in our garden."

The girl stared at her spellbound, faeries and colors swirling in her mind.

"But why is it silver now?"

"Mother Nature sprinkles it with stardust in gratitude for our gift of our colors. With most anything you give, you get something in return, especially when what you gave was given with your heart."

The child smiled and turned back to the picture, pointing to a willowy girl with auburn hair and brown eyes.

"Was that Aunt Ginny?"

"It was," the grandmother smiled, "what a bright girl you are."

"Very bright," the child giggled, "and when I am old my hair will be like the moon."

The old woman laughed, "I am sure it will be." Lifting a finger she pointed to the boy beside the girl. He had dirty blonde hair and pale blue eyes. "This was her fiancée, Neville."

"Fiancée?"

"He was to be her husband, like Grandpapa was mine."

"He wasn't then?"

"No, he died a year before their wedding."

"How?"

Sadness filled the brown eyes, "He was killed during the Great War."

"Oh."

A sorrowful smile formed on the woman's face, the child could be awed by the mention of 'war' but she would never really know what it had been. Text books and stories could only go so far and written accounts were few. No one wanted to remember the Dark times of the war. 

No one wanted to be caught with such evidence…

Looking down at the innocent beauty of her granddaughter she wondered if perhaps it was for the best, but the Head Girl in her knew that ignorance was never best.

Sighing she turned back to the picture, realizing that the girl was asking about two boys sitting in front of the other two couples, one with his arms around the other, she smiled and pointed to each in turn.

"His name was Dean Thomas and he was Seamus Finnigan."

"Why is Seamus holding Dean like Grandpapa was holding you?"

The grandmother paused, uncertain how to go on, but figured honesty was best. The times were changing and the child would know the ways of love and life soon enough.

"Because he felt the same way about Dean as your grandpapa felt about me."

It took the little girl a moment.

"He married him?"

The woman laughed again, "No, dear, but he did love him."

"Then why didn't he marry him like Grandpapa married you?"

"Because people don't understand their type of love."

The little girl frown, the thought becoming too much for her and she changed directions.

"What happened to them?"

"Seamus died in the war, the same time as Neville, and Dean pasted away a few months ago."

A sadness seemed to touch the little girl and the grandmother wondered just how much the child was comprehending from her answers.

A minute or two passed and the child once more pointed to the picture, this time to the far right, where another pair of boys stood apart from the others.

"And them?"

The old woman looked at the picture as if she had forgotten that the boys had been in it. She lifted it, studying them. A tall, lean blonde smirked openly at the camera, his cool grey eyes smiling and his arms wrapped possessively around the other boy's waist. The other boy was only slightly shorter with a firmer build and hair as dark as the other's was light. His eyes were bright and cheerful, the brilliant color of pure emerald. They were complete opposites in complexion and form but together they were perfect.

Memories flowed through her mind; pain and darkness, screams and blasts of light. Fire burned all around and nothing could be seen, friend and foe were intermingled and sorting them out could cost time and lives. She remembered the blinding flash of light and the deafening blast that rent the air all around the battlefield. 

Everything had stopped then, everyone turning toward the sound.

White masks fell from beneath cloaks as Death Eaters let them drop. Up on the hilltop a few meters away three figures stood, two that she knew and had grown to love, standing on either side of a third whose red eyes seemed to burn with all the power of Hell. It happened in slow motion for her as she watched the two charge toward the third, watch as they griped the Dark Lord, their cries of pain as they came in contact with him. He had grown stronger, the Dark Lord had, but she had always assumed that he would be defeated. It had always been fated that he would fall, that Harry would bring him down and save the world. Everything was suppose to end happily like the faerie stories her mother had told her when she was young.

But life was never a faerie story…

Life was far from a faerie story as their screams pierced the air, their figures wavering as the Dark Lord's magick began to burn their flesh. She had watched helpless as the two fought back their screams, gathered their control, and smiled at each other for the last time. Their lips moved in unison as they began an incantation and even from her position she felt the power of the spell fill the air. Silver and gold light weaved in the air, dancing and circling, enclosing the three figures within its light, it was beautiful… Until the lights dimmed and turned black, and a roar rolled through the battlefield. The blackness collapsed in upon itself and burst into flame and ash, leaving the three figures prone and lifeless upon the scorched ground.

It wasn't suppose to have played out that way… not in her faerietale image or in the plans they had devised the day before. 

But in life things rarely ever go the way one plans and neither of the two boys were one to follow the rules.

She smiled painfully at the remembrance.

Tired of waiting the girl turned to her grandmother but didn't say anything as she looked at the face that she had known to always be patient and smiling. There were tears in the woman's eyes and a deep sadness that left the child uncertain.

"Grandmama?"

The child's voice was soft and the grandmother turned slowly towards the girl. She would never know those boys that had been so much apart of her grandparents' lives. Never know the wonderful people that they were… the things they had done. Just as no one would know the wonderful things that they could have done…

"They…"

There was a lump in her throat that had her halting as she worked it down. She had known when she kept the picture that one day it would come to this, someone would ask and the memories would flood back, forcing her to chose her path. Now, to tell them or to hold her memories painfully at bay. She looked at the child again and chose.

"They didn't exist."

The little girl would never know the pain that she and her friends had experienced. She would be eight-six in two months and over thirty years of her life had been engrossed in war, and not just one, but two… Her friends had risked their lives to bring about peace in the wizarding world, she had faced horrors that she would not have wished on anyone, and it had all been in vain…

She was so glad Harry had never known what would come after Voldemort. So glad that he and Draco never knew that their sacrifice had not saved the world that they had so loved. Perhaps, if they had found another way of defeating the Dark Lord, if they had survived, wizard-kind might yet be thriving instead of what they had become: outcasts, hunted and feared. 

'History always repeats itself', someone once said and she could not disagree. She had lived the past, lived in a terrible time of ignorance that had once manifested in the Inquisition and witch trials of history. It hurt to have been betrayed by the type of people she had been born from, the ones she had known as a little girl, the Muggles she had sacrificed her life to protect from Voldemort's cruelty.

There numbers were so decimated after the Great War that when the Crux Niveus Wave, as they called themselves, surfaced and broke over them, there was no possible way to stem the slaughter that erupted. They swept through the world with a crusader's vigor and blindness, wiping out towns and families where they found them. The years of hiding were still branded upon her mind, even now there was still a fear of discovery, fear that this lull was only the calm before the storm, and so she had removed all evidence of her old life.

All but the picture…

Perhaps one day, witches and wizards would surface again, practice their craft, and return to the glory they had known, but she would not live to see it. The world was becoming more tolerant once more, but fear was not so easy to extinguish.

"But they are in the picture…"

She couldn't look at the child as the lie tore again from her throat, "They just didn't exist, Lily."

Something broke inside her, she felt a part of her leave and she glanced down into the eyes of her granddaughter as the girl looked up at her confused.

"Who didn't exist, Grandmama?"

__

"I'm sorry, Hermione…"

She felt something whisper against her ear, a familiar voice promising that everything would be alright soon. Glancing across the room she thought she saw a boy with brilliant green eyes beneath a mop of shaggy black hair, he smiled at her before fading from sight and she felt comforted, wondering who he had been.

"Grandmama?"

The impatient sound of her granddaughter brought her back and she absently stroked the child's hair.

"Hmm? Yes, darling?"

Lily gave her a questioning look, "Tell me more about your friends."

Hermione looked down at the picture in Lily's hands, tracing her fingers again over the six figures in the picture trying to remember their past together. Furrowing her brow, she concentrated, but the only things that would surface were vague snatches of memories, joyful scenes of weddings and birthdays, laughs shared during days at a school that she could no longer name and classes whose curriculum was lost to her. She remembered deaths and births and her parents, but she felt as though most of her life had been erased from her memory.

Was this how Alzheimer's began?

As she began to tell her granddaughter the stories that she remembered, she studied the picture, smiling at the faces of her husband, her sister-in-law, Ginny's husband Neville, and their friends Dean and Seamus, and wondered why there was so much empty space to the right of their group. Their was a beautiful shot of a lake and a forest in that area, but even with the background the picture looked offset.

She smiled and shrugged, tuning back into the story she was weaving for Lily.

Collin always was horrible with a camera…


End file.
